Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Ian Blair given political platform

It seems staggering to put Ian Blair on a such a podium, someone who only days ago was deeply embroiled in an insidious and reckless political campaign, someone who only weeks ago was talking about quitting.

Ian Blair looked strangely refreshed, as if he thinks questions over his own competence and integrity are something of the past, unfortunately, as with Ian Blair generally, he couldn't be further from reality.

Quite early on in his lecture he said:

"Tonight - unbeknown to me until a couple of days ago - the BBC is broadcasting a major and moving documentary about the bombs of 7th July. It begins with a clip of the 2012 announcement"BBC

But that statement cannot be quite accurate, as Ian Blair himself was in that very documentary, where he said, grinning, about the July 7th attacks, and I paraphrase:

"I turned on Sky to see what was going on"

I almost fell off my chair when I heard him say this though:

"Equally importantly, this policing business is serious: we need the best brains and the most balanced characters to undertake the breadth of the task, to steer through the moral questions, to face the challenges of modern policing."BBC

What is "balanced" about Sir Ian Blair ?

During his lecture he dropped many hints about his alliance to New Labour by talking about 'the welfare state', 'Labour's policing goals' etc. He also used his time to recruit and talk up this much hyped idea of a national police force, and various other arguments to which he seeks to draw his audience into a false debate over, the outcome to which has already been established by his political masters.

You know, I am sick and tired of talking about Ian Blair, but it is beyond obscene for this guy to do what he did in this lecture. What I found particularly offensive, was how Ian Blair used, surfed off the back of, and enriched himself with, the brutal killing of Jean Charles de Menezes as a kind of curious talking point to which he is but a passive observer or well intentioned arbitrator. But this attitude is staggering and I think it is worth just refeshing ourselves a little bit about Ian Blair's recent history:

"Senior police officers say the inquiry into the operation will reveal a “horror story” when it is completed before Christmas. One senior insider said: “He (Blair) has obviously been damaged. His own self-confidence has been damaged. You can see that he looks visibly older.”Times

"His [Ian Blair's] insistence that the Met is a spin-free zone puzzled many journalists. In the 48 hours after the fatal shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, many of them received a series of telephone calls from senior police officers. They gave detailed, off-the-record briefings about the events leading up to the shooting of the 27-year-old Brazilian."Telegraph

"On the day the Brazilian electrician was shot dead by police, Sir Ian wrote to Home Office Permanent Secretary Sir John Gieve saying he should be able to suspend as he saw fit a legal requirement to give material to the Independent Police Complaints Commission."ITN

"The loudest cheer may yet come from the Met's rank and file - who rightly or wrongly still believe that their Commissioner is far more interested in placating his political masters and conforming to the dictates of political correctness than standing up for them."Telegraph

In the lecture Ian Blair said:

"The silence can no longer continue. The citizens of Britain now have to articulate what kind of police service they want"